


It Is the Cause

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: Fusion, M/M, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a mission to Lutetia, Blake receives a serious disappointment and an unwelcome resume for the position of 2IC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Is the Cause

_It is the cause, it is the cause my soul  
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!_  
(Othello)

 _You were tired, and your love is growing cold.  
My love for you is growing stronger,   
As our affair--our affair--grows old.  
I've been loving you too long.  
Can't stop now._  
("I've Been Loving You Too Long,")

 

1.  
"Can't you put that damn thing away? I'd like to get some sleep," Blake said, with reference to the large, glossy volume for which his back was being used as a lectern.

"Oh, sorry," Avon said distantly. He closed the book (a lavishly holo-illustrated cookbook), climbed out of bed, and ordered a 25% light level and pinpoint illumination at the desk area.

"Don't get out of bed, I like having you with me when I'm sleeping," Blake said.

"You'll be asleep, for Christ's sake," Avon said. Nevertheless, he put the book, reluctantly, on the desk, climbed back into bed, where waves of resentment emanated from his body, and ordered the lights off.

"Put your arms around me, and don't let go," Blake said, shortly before falling asleep.

In some ways, Avon mused, it was better to be here with Blake, during the long stretches between deemed midnight and deemed morning. He was not willing to admit that Blake's presence took away some of the terror he felt by when he was by himself, in his own cabin. But he did concede that the concealment--having to appear un-terrified in front of Blake--was a valuable exercise. And the nocturnal dialogues with the people he had killed occurred far less often in their shared accommodations.

Nonetheless, in his own cabin, which had assumed the golden place in his memory that others assigned to childhood vacations, he could keep the lights on as long as he wanted! He had the entire bed and all the bedclothes to himself! And he didn't even need the bedclothes as much, because he could adjust the cabin temperature to his own liking. Blake seemed to operate from an ancestral memory of feeding deci-credits into the meter to power a three-bar fire, a throwback to an earlier time before central heating. (Or after someone had decided to locate, and blow up, Central Heating.)

Avon shifted within the space between Blake (who, once asleep, was immovable) and the wall.

2.  
Meanwhile, Gan and Vila shared the watch.

"Do you like it here?" Vila asked.

"Not much," Gan said. "I'm fed up with bloody Avon getting everything. Rotten little tart." Our general's wife is now the general, he thought.

"Well, Blake's fond of him. I reckon that if I had my own ship, and my own bit of stuff, I'd want the one of them to stick around inside the other one." For a moment, Vila wished for ship, bit of stuff, or really, anything of his own, but pushed down the thought under the heading of "dog in the manger."

"I've seen his sort before. A lust of the blood and a permission of the will. He'll get sick of Blake's body, then have a look around for what to do next. He must have change, he must."

"Dunno. Looks to me like he's crazy about Blake."

"Mark me with what violence he first loved Blake just for bragging and telling fantastical lies. Will he love him still for prating?"

"I just hope you're wrong, for Blake's sake," Vila said. "Anyway, you like Blake, don't you? How could anybody not?"

"I follow him to serve my turn upon him," Gan said. "We cannot all be masters, nor all masters cannot be truly followed."

3.  
Avon woke a few minutes early, and went over to the desk to start compiling lists.

"Where are you?" Blake asked sleepily.

"Desk. I'm really excited about this trip."

"Good to hear a bit of enthusiasm from you."

"Something else you never thought you'd hear--that was a bloody good idea of Gan's, putting in that hydroponic farm, it's wonderful to have fresh vegetables. And it keeps him out of our hair most of the time. As we're going to Lutetia, we can get some proper tarragon instead of that rubbish we have now, I was an idiot not to read the catalog more closely."

Blake sat up and rubbed a knuckle against his eyes. "Goddammit, if you could hear yourself, paltering away about bloody tarragon, like...."

"Like a silly queen?" Avon asked with dangerous amiability. He crossed back to the bed. Blake moved back toward the wall to accommodate him, but Avon sat on the floor instead. "Living in the knowledge that every meal may be my last, the least I can do is make sure that there's a sauceboat full of bearnaise to pour over it."

"Well, nobody but you bothers with muck like that."

"That's just where you're wrong. It's true Jenna won't eat anything with that much butter in it, but I always have to make double recipes so there'll be enough for Gan to spread it on his bread with a butter knife."

"Cally!"

"No, it's sweets that she won't eat. I don't know where she puts it, but when it comes to cream, egg yolks, what have you, nothing's too rich for her. And Vila likes classical cuisine well enough, as long as you fill up his plate, although he'd rather have the wine in his glass than reduced with shallots.

Oh, and now that we're squabbling anyway, you'd better give Jenna and me the first shore leave, we'll be having some clothes made so we'll need fittings. That's what I can't see anyone else bothering with. Jenna and I can go first, then Gan and Cally--better let Vila go last so he can enjoy the anticipation properly and work through the hangover when we're drifting about in orbit."

"This isn't a pleasure trip, you know. We're working. And I need you particularly, they wouldn't have bothered in the first place if we couldn't produce someone to speak Frawn with them."

"Tiny little bit of a language, it's only got about forty-five thousand words, and no grammar to speak of."

"I wouldn't care if it was two grunts and an obscene gesture, it's how fond of it they are that counts." Blake sat up and began to unbutton his pajama jacket. "What did you get all dressed for?"

"I'm not," Avon said, and indeed he didn't have his jacket or his boots on. Over the midnight-blue trousers he wore nothing but a crisp, bright white shirt with large starched cuffs. He liked the cuffs when he bought the shirt, now he was annoyed because they got in the way.

"And we're not squabbling," Blake said, walking over to the desk. "I love you. You love me. Now I'm going to take a shower, and don't interrupt me, I've got to think about what we'll do downplanet." He picked up one of Avon's hands, kissed it briskly, and strolled toward the bathroom.

That was a purely formal request, Avon thought. We've got past the point where clothing is seen merely as a tantalizing veil over nudity--an achievable challenge!, and nudity as an explicit invitation. Especially now that I'm angry.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence, well, I'm fucking fed up being the odalisque in this Standard-by-Six seraglio. I've no proper work of my own. I'm just trailing around behind Blake, under circumstances that are generally disagreeable and nearly always dangerous. I daren't think what will happen to us if we lose, and I can't bestir much enthusiasm for what happens if we win.

How stale, flat, dull and unprofitable seem all the uses of this ship to me. This brave surrounding firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fires, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilential congregation of vapors.

Loving Blake is like buying a listed building, Avon thought. It takes all your resources to just keep patching and patching it up, but there's always something else to go wrong, and they won't let you alter the fabric so nothing can really change.

He didn't know it, but Blake felt the same way about him.

4.  
Avon's heart lifted a little at his first sight of Lutetia. The delicately proportioned buildings, mostly in an austere shade of gray stone, a few creamy or built of warm brick, guarded in scrolls of wrought iron, seemed splendidly human- (or humanoid-) scaled. The few splashes of crimson or lapis blue, in awnings and postboxes, were tasteful. The glitter of windows was softened with thick cream lace.

Everyone seemed to stroll, or lounge at a café table, in impeccably cut clothes while carrying long loaves of bread and bouquets spilling out of starchy white cornets. There were bay trees planted in green boxes at the edge of the streets.

Years back, the street signs were all in Standard, as one would expect. But the populace pretended not to be able to read them. So, little by little, addresses in Frawn began to appear in advertisements. A few minor functionaries slipped up and used them in official documents. Whoops! Well, they--the functionaries--weren't missed. It is unlikely that the documents would have been either.

Then someone came up with the idea of attaching the Frawn names to the street signs on little chains. Which worked well enough until someone started vandalizing the parts in Standard. So they jacked it in and put the Frawn names on the top part of the sign, with the Standard ones underneath, where they were inevitably knocked down or spray-painted over or stolen to adorn someone's dormitory room.

5.  
It wasn't entirely Avon's fault. He didn't speak Frawn as well as he gave himself credit for, but then it was a cherished local tradition to pretend not to comprehend outlanders who had the effrontery even to try.

When they got to their hotel, the concierge, lumpy in gray cardigan and carpet slippers, waited with delighted anticipation during the three-minute speech Avon had composed, so she could snort, and say, "Comment?"

Blake really didn't want to laugh, but a chortle or two escaped.

They were in a hotel room, on one of the most romantic planets in the galaxy, under a soft goosefeather duvet. Neither of them liked to raise the possibility of refusal, so they made love, after a fashion, and gratefully stopped as soon as they had moved a pixel past "perfunctory."

When they got to the Ministry of Defense offices the next day. Blake had hoped to avoid using the Ministry's interpreter (because interpreters can have their own agendas, or their own deficiencies). However, the MoD insisted on speaking Frawn, and would grudgingly accept written documents from Avon, but wouldn't concede that anyone understood a word he said.

"Translations, eh?" Gan said, after Blake returned with one immense stack of papers in each language. "If they're faithful, they're not beautiful. If they're beautiful, they're not faithful."

6.  
It would be sacrilege not to have wine with a meal like this, so Avon ordered a half bottle of white, a half bottle of red, and a large bottle of mineral water to space it all out.

It would also be sacrilege to bring a texreader to such a temple, (or even to talk to one's table companions, if any--reverent and meditative chewing was the thing), so Avon looked around the restaurant and sipped a glass of wine. The Clos de Centero seemed a bit austere, not as much fruit as he would have liked, but after all it was primarily a food wine and the food hadn't arrived yet.

Avon almost dropped his fork in astonishment when he tasted the first bite of the first course. The glistening white china plate displayed tiny haricots verts, with shavings of vengulla nuts (imported from halfway across the Galaxy, at a semiprecious-stone tariff) bathed in some kind of composed butter. Lemon, clearly; parsley; nutmeg--maybe cardamom, but only to the extent of an acolyte holding a cardamom pod on a censer and processing through the kitchen.

It was so simple but such a wonderful dish that it seemed to Avon that he had never had a green bean before--and, in fact, that he had never really had food before.

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, he prayed.

7.  
"Did Avon come back with you?" Gan asked.

"No, there was some restaurant he was mad to go to, four hours to eat little dabs of things off fifteen different plates, I couldn't be doing with that," Blake replied.

"Well, we saved you some shepherd's pie, shall I heat it up and bring it to your cabin?"

"Good man! You're a lifesaver," Blake said, and went to his cabin, unlacing his jacket as he went. It felt good to take his boots off, better to tuck into a steaming plate, best to wash it down with the tankard of ale Gan handed him. This is what we're fighting for, Blake thought. The freedom of the honest Gan.

Blake is of a free and open nature, Gan thought. He thinks men honest that but seem to be so. He'll be as tenderly led by the nose as asses are.

"Sit down," Blake said. "Did you bring one for yourself?"

"Didn't seem right."

"Well, go get yourself one, get yourself a few, bring some more in and we'll make a session of it." Fucking hell, he thought. For once I can sit in this cabin and talk to someone for more than five minutes without getting an argument.

Gan came back with a pitcher of ale. A large pitcher.

"And let me the canikin clink, clink," Gan sang, after making a couple of trips to replenish the pitcher.

"And let me the canikin clink.  
A soldier's a man  
A life's but a span  
Why then, let a soldier drink."

Blake joined in on the chorus.

Gan knew another song:

"King Stephen was a worthy peer;  
His breeches cost him but a crown;  
He held 'em sixpence all too dear,  
With that he called the tailor lown.  
He was a wight of high renown  
And thou art but of low degree  
Tis pride that pulls the country down;  
Then take thine auld cloak about thee."

"Marvelous stuff, isn't this?" In a way, Blake meant the ale, but he also meant the companionship of one of his rank-and-file followers. It was something he hadn't had much of lately, and he realized that he missed it.

"Well, as long as we keep it in check," Gan said. "Can't do this too often, you know. It can get treacherous. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"

Blake was thinking this over when he heard a familiar step outside the cabin door, and his eyes lit up. "Oh, look, Avon's back."

Gan stood up. "Look to him, Blake, if you have eyes to see," Gan murmured on the way out. "He's a deceiver, isn't he? He's done it before. That's what he's like." He smiled amiably at Avon as they passed in the doorway.

"Some bring pleasure by entering, some by leaving," Avon murmured.

"Well, he's not mad keen on you either."

"And are you?"

It balanced on a knife edge, could have gone either way--five pints of ale was more than Blake usually took at a time, and a bottle of wine was certainly more than Avon usually did, and both could be awesomely mean drunks. But this time, Blake put his arms around Avon and whispered "Yes, I am," and instead of pushing him away, Avon felt silly and amorous and altogether closer to real desire for Blake than he had for weeks.

So that was all right.

8.  
The trick, in dominating hundreds of worlds, is to gauge the stress and tolerance levels. If you extinguish all hope, then those who have nothing to lose may very well decide to fight you. You'll want to take your planetary toys for all they're worth, of course, but when you're far away, you often lose sight of what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

There were plenty of planets that didn't mind adopting Standard as an official language. Sometimes they were even grateful, if it stopped the tribes from trying to exterminate each other along linguistic boundaries.

In the case of Lutetia, they were so proud of their language (as comprehensively monitored by the Academie Lutece) that they wouldn't even adopt Standard terms for evolving technologies, instead preferring cumbersome phrases they had developed themselves.

Oh, that and the VAT. The combination of linguistic separatism and tax revolt was enough to make Lutetia at least think about seceding from the Federation--depending on how much help they thought the Liberator would be, during the first phase of their rebellion.

9.  
Vila, turning the flight deck over to Jenna and Avon for their watch, was surprised at how amicably and energetically they were conversing. They each had a pile of tearsheets (well, Jenna had torn the pages out of Clobber and Slap, and Avon had cut the pages out of Vogue Hommes with a micro-probe) and were eagerly making final selections of clothes to buy.

"I'm going to the House of Lacquer," Jenna said. "They make the most beautiful clothes! The best and the most extravagant fabrics! And the details and the handwork--I mean, just look at that beading!"

Avon, however, greatly preferred the House of Harmony, which was noted for the best-fitted--and most flattering--designs whose seemingly plain fabrics imperceptibly blended cashmere or its unearthly analogues into fine wool. And he rather admired Geoffroi Saindor, doyen of the House, for having turned down an immense order from Servalan on political grounds.

Jenna and Avon didn't have anywhere to wear couture clothes, as they knew perfectly well. But then, they didn't really expect to live long enough for their new gear to become outmoded. Nor did they have much of anything on which to spend their share of the Treasure Room, given that room, board, mileage, and ammunition were compris.

10.  
Geoffroi Saindor, as already noted, had some degree of rebel sympathies. When M. Chevreuil turned up in his salon, he knew very well who he was (thanks to information, or at least gossip, from a young follower of Avalon's who could not afford couture, but who made up for it by looking so charming in rough workman's garb). Saindor liked to attend personally to a few patrons who were, in one way or another, special.

11.  
Etreignaer, a transitive Frawn verb that has no direct equivalent in Standard, means "to wear an item of clothing for the first time."

In a way, Blake was sorry that Avon had not etraignae the new suit, in their cabin. But in a way, he was glad for the surprise. He saw Avon, at the other end of a corridor, talking animatedly to one of the translators. (Blake couldn't hear if it was Frawn or Standard, or if they had developed some private patois already.)

Avon wore a black grain-de-poudre tunic, with a self belt, over plain black leggings. He had dug the thigh-high boots out of the back of the cupboard. Blake hadn't seen them for a while. The black of the tunic was relieved by a cream satin ring collar, and by what appeared to be lines of piping on the sides and running along the seams of the arm. But when Avon moved, it became clear that the tunic was tailored with deep inverted pleats, lined with the same cream satin.

Lutetia decreed rather longer tunics that year than Earth did, so there wasn't much of a gap between the hem of the tunic and the top of the boots. Only about a handspan, if the hand could reach an octave, or perhaps a ninth. Blake felt a stab of pianist envy.

I could die now, this minute, and not mind it, Blake thought. Because, with everything that's happened, that's at all likely to happen, do I think I'll ever be this happy again?

12\.   
"Don't you think you'd better keep an eye on him?" Gan asked Blake. who pretended not to know what he was talking about. "Or maybe I should be the one to keep an eye on him."

"You're mad," Blake said. "You're wrong."

"Ocular proof?" Gan said. "Would you behold him grossly topped?"

"Be certain that you prove my love a whore," Blake said.

"Oh, you won't be disappointed," Gan told him.

"I don't see what your interest is in the first place."

"I'm looking out for you, of course. I hate to see you made a fool of. But yes, I'd like something for myself."

"What?"

"You need a reliable second-in-command. One you can trust."

"Gan, I don't need a second-in-command at all. A crew of this size? Now, if we take on some new recruits, we'll have a look round then."

"What if we're fully engaged in the Lutetian War? Won't you need someone downplanet, when you're up here in command?"

13.  
"Do me a favor, and I'll see that Blake lets you have shore leave tomorrow instead of next week," Gan told Vila.

"What do you want?"

"You can do a surveillance, can't you? Do it right, so the bloke you're following doesn't twig?"

"Give me some credit."

"All right then, take this camera and lock it on to Channel 9. Give Blake an eyeful of what Avon is up to."

"And how'm I going to figure out where he's going before he goes there, and get in to bug the bedroom?"

"Won't be necessary. Just get a shot of the outside of the building."

"Dunno if I need shore leave that badly," said Vila, who had heard the phrase "shooting the messenger."

"Maybe now you don't," Gan said. "But remember, there may be some changes made. Think about which way you expect the cat to jump."

 

14.  
"Cinq a sept," said Geoffroi. "A delightful interlude in the day. After which...one goes home."

Avon was delighted that Geoffroi understood him so well. He picked up the glass (champagne-and-blackcurrant), drank a little for the sake of courtesy, and put it back down. He felt anxious, in all senses of the term. It was quite obvious what was going to happen, and he felt apprehensive, guilty in advance, resentful toward Blake for making him feel guilty, and desperately eager for the touch of a new partner.

He was like a baby cannibal, pushing his Missionary rissoles around on the plate (when they succeeded to Boiled Missionary, Missionary Omelette, Curried Missionary, and Missionary a la King). Sometimes you feel like a new man.

Oh, damn him, Avon thought. I never promised him I'd be faithful, and only a fool would believe it if I had. (But, he felt obliged to remind himself, you saw him hearing the promises you didn't make. And you didn't correct him, you told yourself you didn't want to hurt him.)

There is nothing wrong with wanting someone else, he thought. There is nothing wrong with reciprocating someone else's desire, and even carrying that reciprocated desire into reality. Oh, but Blake thinks it's wrong. And Avon felt obliged to remind himself that more people agreed with Blake than agreed with him.

And he felt it was only fair to force himself to confront the fact that, although Geoffroi's handsome (and no doubt surgically enhanced) face, his café-cognac voice, his body trained in an endless effort to keep time at bay, his charming manner, his obvious attraction, all aroused Avon, in fact it was the sense of transgression that really excited him.

He was on fire, from the first brush of the fingers handing him the champagne flute, to the delicious pounding of very hot water in the shower thoughtfully stocked with plain, unscented soap.

Five o'clock comes every day, so they both knew not to exhaust themselves. Save something, for home. Because one of the most notable consequences of sleeping with someone else is enhanced desire for one's original partner.

15.  
Blake didn't look up from the flight deck console. "Yes, who is it? What do you want?"

I am one, sir, Gan thought, that comes to tell you that your lover and that man are making the beast with two backs. Even now, now, very now, an old gray ram is tupping your white ewe.

"Tune in to Channel 9," Gan said. "Err, you may want to go someplace more private to do it."

They walked to Blake's cabin, one of them in no very light mood.

The vidclip that Vila transmitted showed Avon going into an art gallery, sorting through a portfolio of hololiths, and bargaining to buy one. Next, he went to a patisserie-confiserie and bought a small gold box of something. The Frawn word freondaise stuck in Blake's mind, because it reminded him of the inert gas. The clip stopped with Avon ringing the doorbell of an exquisite town house. He put the art-gallery package down on the ground, but kept the ballotine in his hand. He was looking down, smiling just a little.

Blake knew that expression: Up to Something. He was convinced.

I'm sure that picture was expensive, he thought. Though not as expensive as the gallery thought it would be. God forbid that Avon would ever let anyone think they had been kind to him. And the sweets--something to nibble on. He wouldn't like to go long without something in his mouth.

"All right," Blake said. "You want to be my lieutenant? You can be. I am your own, forever."

Gan had the tact to tiptoe out, at that point, gracious in victory.

16.  
"You're sitting in the dark, Blake. Shall I put on the light?"

Put out the light and then put out the light, Blake thought, staring blankly at the monitor displaying the frozen images that he would have been able to see if the lights in the cabin had been on. Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars that make ambition virtue!

Avon had the lights put on at 50% level without waiting for a response. In the half-light, he looked younger, and clean and happy and relaxed.

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, and love thee after, Blake thought. And then he thought, oh God, I stood up to so much worse than this without flinching. So why do I want to cry now?

"You bastard," Blake said. "How could you betray me like this?"

Avon knew that, depending on how this played out, it would be either a bad idea, or unfair, to touch Blake. So he sat on the floor next to the desk. "Oh, Blake," he said. "How have I betrayed you? It didn't change the way I feel about you, or the way I treated you. I wanted someone else and he wanted me, and I spent a couple of delightful evenings with him and came home. As I always intended to do, and as he intended me to do."

"And you expect me to feel better because it didn't mean anything? Because you think so little of yourself that anyone can have your body? Because you think so little of me?"

Avon half-turned away. "Blake, that's precisely what you don't understand. It meant a lot to me. It just meant something different than here, than us." He didn't think that Blake would agree, accept, or even understand that there had been a period--oh, it had lasted absolutely minutes, perhaps even a couple of hours--when he had felt re-connected to pleasure and emotion, when what had been dead within him bloomed again. Blake would simply accuse him of claiming to have cheated on Blake for Blake's own good.

"Stand up," Blake said, and Avon did, although not for long, because the right cross dumped him back on the floor.

He quite welcomed the pain, because it kept the panic in check. Of course the retina isn't detached, he thought. I can't see out of that eye because it's swollen shut. All it is, is that police court staple, a black eye. By the time Avon sat up, Blake had sat down heavily on their bed--or, perhaps, the bed. It remained to be determined whether a pronoun or a mere definite article was appropriate.

"Cunt," Blake sobbed.

"You fucking idiot," Avon said calmly, on his way through the door, wondering where to go. Home to Mother was not a real option, but there were seventy-nine unused cabins. He looked down at his hands, and willed the left palm to stop brushing against the right.

He didn't really expect to sleep, so he went to Battle Computer Room C (after a brief stop at the medical bay to run the tissue regenerator over his eye). Slowly, almost meditatively, he ran the network card 30-day maintenance check, four days early. He wouldn't have been able to do it very fast anyway. Although the swelling was receding, he still couldn't open his eye very far.

The conventionality of the whole thing depressed him. Yes, of course, he thought, most people would think that I provoked him, drove him to it, that even now the equities are on Blake's side.

How could Blake fail to understand how much worse it is, to be imprisoned for a short life by someone whom I love, than for a long one by people whom I hate?

Does he expect me to be aroused by that performance of mastery? Does he think that I want to atone, and be punished? Avon acquitted his lover of either of those two counts of culpable stupidity (although it may have been a sympathy verdict, rather than one prompted by strict consideration of the evidence).

He set the alarm on his wristchron for 0730 ship time, in case he got in a few hours of sleep on the floor of Battle Computer Room C, his face--the side that wasn't contused!--pillowed on his arm. He was rostered for watch at 0800. His sponge bag was in the ensuite bathroom of their cabin (Blake's cabin?), but he knew that he could get a toothbrush and a comb and depilatory cream from the supply closet, and some clean clothes from the Wardrobe Room.

17.  
"Mad at me for snapping those pics?" Vila asked.

"Yes." You have lost the immortal part of yourself, he thought--not at all seriously--and what remains is bestial. Vila Bestial--your evil twin!

"Going to do anything to me?" Vila asked.

"I'm reserving the option. Probably not. I'm sick of getting caught for things I've actually done, but I can't really feel hard done by because of it."

"God, you are a fool," Vila said, feeling temporarily impervious. "If I had somebody loved me that much...and to just throw it all away for a bit of fun..."

Avon turned around to look him full in the face (Vila flinched at the brilliant red signal beacon of his eye). "But just who, or what, does he love? His possession? His fantasy? His talisman--sometimes I suspect he thinks that as soon as I give in and tell him that I believe in his bloody stupid Cause, then the enchantment will dissolve, and the Federation will be vanquished in a breath."

"Why don't you do it, then? And we can all go home and get bought drinks telling about our adventures."

Because then I'd lose Blake for good...

If I haven't already.

"I hate being frightened and bored at the same time," Avon said. "Haven't you ever felt so locked in stasis that you'd do anything to get out? It's not as if I were accomplishing anything here."

"I bet under normal circumstances it would take about eight people to keep this bucket of bolts afloat," Vila said.

"Charming," Avon said. "Just what I wanted. An overeducated garage hand with significant short interest in my life expectancy."

"This other fellow," Vila said. "What is it about him? Bigger whatzit?"

"No."

"More tricks in bed?"

Well, yes. "No."

"Better looking?"

"I suppose so, I didn't really notice. I don't care about Blake for his looks, you know, or lack of looks. It's seeing into him, in himself. That's why I didn't just hop off at the first chance. Why I'm still here."

"Well, you're not very observant," Vila said. "I've never forgotten the ticking off he gave Cally just for using his coffee mug."

18.  
Avon was curious about how Blake would rearrange the schedule, to avoid contact with him. After all, there was some utility in being the second-best computer man in the Federation, so he would be hard to replace. It was a large enough ship to permit a significant degree of evasion, and a small enough crew so that their next scheduled, shared watch was mid-watch a day later.

Blake declined to rearrange the schedule.

"Jesus," he said to Avon.

"Oh, I agree. It made quite a mess. If it's symbolism you're interested in, you should have hit me across the mouth. For aesthetics, under the cheekbone. But don't worry, I've become fairly blasé about being punched in the face."

"I'm not, about infidelity. You cut my heart out," Blake said, and Avon remembered Geoffroi murmuring, "Coeur--is that a common name, on Earth?" Geoffroi is the murmuring sort--Blake is NOT, Avon thought. "How could you not understand, how much I need to be able to trust you?"

"I'm not to be owned," Avon said. "And that's what you mean by trust. And probably what you mean by love."

Blake cleared his throat, looked down, and began with careful casualness. "They register marriages on Cavernaugh 8. All kinds of marriages. It's only a day or two away from here, even at Standard by Four."

Avon was touched, but also much angrier. He walked over to Blake's flight-deck station. "Why, are you planning to put a tracer in my wedding ring? Or a remote-operation Lazeron to deep-fry anyone who looks at me? Do you consider it a conditioning device, or a bad-conduct prize?"

"I don't care who looks at YOU," Blake said. "But I need to be able to be sure of you."

"Well, Blake, if you want me to leave, I should prefer to do so other than when the airlock is open and the ship is at Standard by Eight. You're almost done with your meetings on Lutetia. Do you want me to stay there?"

If I expected fidelity or apologies, I went to the wrong shop, Blake thought. What's getting my life ruined again? Blake thought. And why shouldn't I salvage what I can? I deserve that, and a damn sight more. "Get back to your position," he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Othello, of course, but with a lesser degree of domestic violence.


End file.
